


Requiem For a Family

by highfivingjesus



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Absent Parents, Alternate Universe, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, No Smut, One Shot, One True Pairing, References to Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, References to Drug Use, Single Parents, Sorry Not Sorry, sweet!Percy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 17:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfivingjesus/pseuds/highfivingjesus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before I can stop them, the dam breaks and my resolve breaks and I break and left in the place of all that is broken are the pieces and the tears and a very quiet Percy, whose fingers are dancing across my shoulders and over my skin and down my arms. </p>
<p>It is the first time I've caught a glimpse of a Percy I could live with.</p>
<p>And he is beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem For a Family

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know. I just got inspired and threw words around and this came out. But it was a lot of fun to write.

It is the first time I've caught a glimpse of a Percy I could live with.

And he is beautiful.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

It feels as if this room could swallow me whole. I think it's willing me to disappear from this place of humanity, where other people are content and some are aspiring and others just sort of drift. They are all set and comfortable in their skin but mine is trying to force me out, elsewhere.

Life is trying to run me over.

My knuckles turn white on the receiver.

Dad's face flashes across the screen, a picture that I had to take candidly while he worked.

I won't let it.

I don't hear when Percy moves to stand in the doorway, but I can feel his eyes on the back of my head and everything about the touch of his attention smoothing fingers across my back makes my skin pebble. I do my best to ignore him. For now.

After, though, when I've broken my own heart, I will need the Percy that I've only caught foretastes of, when he forgot that he's supposed to hate me. I will need the Percy he was before life tried to run him over, too, by killing his mom and shoving him into the uncertain hands of his absentee father.

I accept my father's call for the last time.

"Annabeth!" he puffs into what is probably his office phone, while he tinkers away at one of his model airplanes. I switch it to speaker and set the phone in front of me. I don't mind if Percy hears. "Where have you been? Your mother called and said you ran off again. You can't keep doing that, Annabeth, honey."

I think about what I want to say to him, but I'm not sure how to word it yet. I keep quiet while he continues to prattle on about responsibility and maturity and stability, about needing family and a home and a good start to the rest of my life. It's all meant to be very soothing and convincing, and the tone he's chosen this time is the fatherly kind that isn't loud and angry, but rather soft and understanding. It makes my blood burn hot in my skin so I dig my fingers into the fur of the rug I'm sitting on and try to breathe evenly.

I can hear Helen in the back, asking him who he's talking to. To his credit he does try to shoo her but she's much too stubborn for him and he's much too pliable. I can hear her demand the phone of him; she's chosen the angry and loud tone instead of pretending to understand that she's the devil.

"Annabeth!" I like how they start their phone calls the same. Huffy and aggravated and immediately using my name to show who they blame for these feelings. They're matching; it's kind of cute. "Where the hell have you been? What's this on the news about you and some boy? What have you gotten yourself into now? Do you know how this looks…" She pauses, like maybe she's realized that I don't care how it looks for her family. "Do you understand the implications this makes against you?"

But Percy's not who everyone seems to think he is.

In fact, just last week he accidentally told me that his most intimate act was kissing his girlfriend for nearly five minutes in a public restroom. And I didn't count it as intimate at all, but rather vile and odd.

"Yes, Helen."

"Then why, in the name of all that is good and right, would you move in with him?"

Because I was sick of waiting these past nine years for you and dad to realize I had left.

Because I was sick of knowing that no one in my family even cared.

Because I was sick of holding onto hope that mom would stick around.

Because I was sick of not having a bed to call my own, but rather hotel rooms that mom moved to and from.

Because I was sick of waiting for her to remember where I was after one of her late night rendezvous.

Because I was sick of her boyfriends and lovers and false attempts at being nurturing.

Because I was sick of everyone who was ever supposed to love me.

Everyone but him.

"Because he offered." I shrug and pull my hair over my shoulder to start untangling it. I cringe as I remember the fit I had thrown in my room, crying and cursing and stomping around while he laid in his bed across the hall and did his homework. Like a good boy, knowing I'd only throw him across the room, too, if he tried to intervene while I was pissed.

"Because he—excuse me? Do you just accept every offer you get?" I can hear the probably she won't tag on in front of my father. "What about that Luke boy? He was nice." Helen always liked Luke. Of course, Luke was fourteen while I was seven and he only hung around because I could do his homework without thinking too much. And we were friends; nothing more.

"Helen, you realize it's been nine years, right? I was seven. There was never a me and Luke." I wait for that to sink in. Then I start to tear into her and her awfulness, spitting away the bits of her that are too bitter and rotten to swallow. "Did you even realize that I had left, when I was seven? Did you go looking for me—"

She starts to interrupt.

"For more than the half hour that you went through to appease my dad! Did you ever really look? Because honestly, I was hiding out in the library. Where the hell else would I have gone?" I rip a knot out of my curls and swallow back a vicious shout of rage. It stemmed from either my hatred or the pain, but I tell myself that it comes from both. I answer for her: "No. You didn't. You were too relieved to be done with the child from a past affair, while you were to be wed."

I throw that in because I want it to hurt.

I want her to hurt as much as I have in the past years, but I've only got a phone call to force it all in.

"You were glad that his freak of a bastard daughter had gone and you were hoping that I'd get kidnapped or run over or caught in the crossfire of some shoot-off because then I'd never come back."

I hate that she doesn't deny it.

"You just wanted that picture perfect family, where you weren't talked about and Frederick wasn't talked about and Matthew and Bobby weren't talked about. You didn't want them to be bullied because of what my dad did and what those other kids' parents told them about us! You didn't want to hear me whine about being bullied because you never cared! Everything, from the very beginning, has been about you and your family and your image, and I'm sorry that I don't fit into! But I'm done trying, okay? I've been done with your cookie-cutter, sideways, two-faced, virtue-less way of life for nine years. I hope it hurts to know that I've outgrown you."

All of you.

Then Helen starts to raise her voice. She tells me I'm ungrateful—guilty—and selfish—that's fine—and too young and stupid to understand all that she's done for me—yeah, okay. I was always trying to cause trouble for her family: coming home early with more detentions than a seven-year-old should have, and biting that one kid that one time, and always hating my brothers and making sure I let them know it.

It's all rather shallow and I've heard it enough times for it to not bother me anymore. I guess it should, but it doesn't.

I understand that she doesn't know how to truly hurt me. No one does.

I glance over at Percy to see that he's moved a little further into the room, his face turning a violent red and his fists clenched, and rephrase that thought.

No one can hurt me yet. But maybe, one day, I'll let him in.

Silence begins to ring in my ears and it registers that she's finally done.

"Can I talk to my father now?"

She starts yelling at me again, but I understand the answer to be a firm no.

"Tell him I love him and that I'm sorry, but I'm done."

I lean forward and press the red button to end the call. And just like that—I'm free. I feel the weight drop from my shoulders like a burden I shouldn't have been carrying around for all of this time. My eyes well but I force that down for later when I'm in my room, picking up the mess I made. Besides, there's one more call I need to make.

Percy stands over me now, uncertainly, and I wonder if I should help him figure out what he should do but even I don't honestly know what that is. I continue to pull at the rug, self-consciously now, and input my mother's cell number. I have to dial a few times before I realize that it might not be good for me to talk to her.

She might be high or drunk or in bed with someone, and while my mother isn't perfect, I want her to remember my last words to her.

The beat fills the room as soon as she picks up and I put it on speaker, and she begins shouting to be heard. She also tells some guy that he can wait his turn, she'll bless him with her presence soon enough.

She truly believes herself to be a goddess, and I know that's not healthy. I never turned her in, though, because it wasn't a harmful thought and she fits in well with the rest of society because everyone's beginning to think that way. They're all quite full of themselves.

"Mom?"

"Who is this?"

That gives me pause and I hope that she just didn't hear me right. A moment later, the sound dulls and instead there is the occasional car horn. She stepped outside.

"Mom," I try again and move my legs from their Indian style so that my knees tent around the phone. I sit my elbows on them and hang my head to stare at her picture. Mom really is beautiful; I got most of my traits from her, except maybe my nose, and she still manages to outshine me in every way. More enticing, more intelligent, more social. I'll even go so far as to say that she tries more than I do when it comes to family. We're just both awful at it.

"Yeah, who is this?"

I freeze. Seriously. "How many people call you mom?"

"I don't know? I stopped trying to keep track after the fourth one."

"What number am I?"

"Well, that depends on what name I gave you."

I drop my head in my hands, knowing that I'm not going to like my answer. This isn't what I wanted to talk about. But nothing I ever want is what I get with my mother, and since I'm so accustomed to sinking into the skin of the there-but-not-really-there daughter, I let the conversation persist.

"Annabeth."

She hesitates. That's nice; thanks mom. "Your father is Frederick?"

I nod but give no verbal answer. It doesn't matter because she catches onto it, like usual. The question wasn't even really necessary; she knew already. She remembers the people that matter to her.

"Okay," she blows out a breath of air and the gears start kicking around in her mind. Percy lowers himself to the carpet behind me silently and begins to play with my hair, as he remembers our friend Thalia doing after school when I told them that I was abused as a child, in more ways than the physical aspect.

I accept his comfort, because it works almost immediately. I don't mind mom's habits as much as I normally would.

"Okay," she repeats, much more confident this time. "You're the youngest. I don't have a number for you, but you were my last."

"You've been very careful the last sixteen years."

"I've been very celibate the last sixteen years."

We both take that for what it is: she wants to set a good example now that we don't live together and she's sober enough to recognize that she has influence over me. Now that I don't follow her around, it's as it always was when I would get annual phone calls from her as a child. She could live as she wanted then, so long as she was sober when we spoke, could lie to me well, and could convince me to stay out of trouble, like I believed she had been.

But we know it's not true.

I don't push the subject.

"So, listen, mom," I try but I've lost her interest. I waited too long to say what I meant, like always, and she's found something new to occupy her time.

"Oh, Annabeth, if you were here right now." She doesn't even bother hiding her lustful greed. It paints every inch of her voice and makes it drip ravenously.

"We talked about this. I can't legally go to clubs with you."

"You're no fun! But he's positively delicious."

"What happened to that other guy that's waiting for you?"

"The fun is all in the chase, Annabeth. Oh, aren't I pun-y," she laughs, delighted that she remembered my last name and used it as a compliment to me and my father. I do admit to blushing a little at the thought. I still love my mother enough for her opinion to matter. That bothers me but I don't try to shove it away this time. I let it come all the way out of my pores so that I'm bursting with it, and when it's all gone I'll be free. Free of her and her boyfriends and her strange dwellings and her bongs and her booze.

I try to think of what I can say to that but it doesn't take mother long to fill the pregnant silence.

"Oh, baby, don't you have a boyfriend by now?" I resent the fact that she threw in a by now with Percy sitting so close by. I know he didn't miss that. And he'll use it against me eventually; not tonight, but someday.

"No."

"Oh, yes, you do! Liar; what about that boy you're living with? What was his name? He better have a job. And condoms." Car brakes squeal around her words and swallow them hungrily. I know she's still chattering away but it is all a blur of sounds and shouts and laughter. Eventually, it evens out until it's a dull roar and she can be heard. "Oh, love, my ride's here. But I'll call you again soon and we can catch up, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay." But she never calls. And she never will.

I'll probably never speak to her again.

That was the plan.

I say "Mom" and almost choke out an I love you too late. The line goes dead.

Before I can stop them, the dam breaks and my resolve breaks and I break and left in the place of all that is broken are the pieces and the tears and a very quiet Percy, whose fingers are dancing across my shoulders and over my skin and down my arms. He reaches around me for the phone with the blank screen and tosses it behind him, onto the couch. I sob into my hands.

I don't realize it until I feel the fur rise up around me and suck me in to pet at my nose and my eyes and my hair, but Percy has lain me down and followed suit, turned in towards me. I'm facing him, grabbing his forearm and holding it tight, just in case I might have to let go of him soon. I don't want to let him go.

I squeeze my eyes tight and try to force away the budding water that has blossomed down my cheeks but it is as unrelenting as my hold on him. I have no one now. I have disowned my family entirely, even if they might not realize it yet. And I know that I did it of my own accord and that I should be cold as stone towards them but it still hurts to let go of the people who were meant to love me the most. It hurts to say goodbye to just the possibility of a happy family, a whole family.

It hurts that mother was so flippant and that father let Helen take control of everything between us and that Helen kept me from properly saying goodbye to him.

When I peel my eyes open, it is because Percy is prying my fingers open. I want to fight for my chord to this world but I just watch as he moves to link our hands together. That's better. That is so much better.

I draw in a shuttering breath and move my gaze to his face and I see, in the dim light of the night, with the firelight flickering around my back and across his body, that his cheeks aren't so angry anymore but now they're splotchy. His eyes are glassy and vibrant and lively. He feels so much and I wonder which emotion is attached to me and if I might be able to return it equally.

I think to say something to him but he hushes me and pulls us closer together. His free hand wraps around my neck and pulls me in so that he can press his lips to my forehead. And it is long and sweet and slow; I feel my heart stir wonderfully in my chest, reaching for his.

He pulls away and moves so that I am curled into him and he's wrapped around me and there is no he and I but an us.

It is the first time I've caught a glimpse of a Percy I could live with.

And he is beautiful.


End file.
